For every roadtrip from now into infinity, I will only use the Boy Band voice on Waze for navigation. The only acceptable directions are those sung to me by a charming and effeminate voice, which goes for passengers providing directions, too. We got them to sing “make a u-turn” once or twice. It’s gotta be their next hit single. We also set the boys to meters to make them match road signs, which was partially useless as we are Americans and are oblivious to the metric system.
We left our idyllic slice of Playa Hermosa after breakfast and hit the road for a ~3hr journey to Monteverde.
Guided by the dulcet tones of our trusty boy band (Los Ticos?), we made our way down the interamericana highway and up into the mountains to Monteverde. During the first part of the trip, it dawned on me that I understand less than half of the signs on the road. I could have perhaps studied harder. The Interamericana highway is dotted with mysterious speed limits which oscillate between 90 and 60 kph based on rules we didn’t quite understand. We spent a lot of time pondering what a sign with a circle around a car passing a truck on the left meant when “right” was on the sign and there was no mention of the word for slow.
I reckoned that if I drove with the other cars, the police couldn’t possibly detect my gross ineptitude at comprehending the road signs and pull me over. I would just give away my tourist status instead by actually using my turn signal when I changed lanes…
The interamericana was four lanes before going down to two, dotted with people selling watermelons and frozen green coconuts (pipas frias) along the way. We saw less crazy drivers on this stretch of the road (I maintain that they only come out in the afternoon), and we managed to get gas without making complete fools of ourselves.
The road to Monteverde was paved for the first third of the 36km up the mountain. I learned to read the sign for “narrow bridge” as it indeed indicated there was a narrow-ass bridge ahead. This road had guardrails, which were missing big sections at strategic moments, or looked like someone had plowed right into one. We also passed a few graveyards, presumably for the crazy drivers and tourists on this not-so-safe road.
We were following an armored truck which I used as a speed gauge for some of the sharp curves and rough pavement. After a ways, the road became graded gravel.
I assumed this meant that the armored truck would take it down a notch and we could follow it up to Monteverde.
I was wrong. That truck really booked it up the hairpin turns and sharply graded hills. We lost it after about 10 minutes of bumping along in its dusty wake.
The guard rails from the last stretch of road were replaced with barbed wire, presumably to not keep the cars on the road but to keep some kind of pasture animal in. Sometimes, the road was wide enough for only one car with a sharp dropoff to one side, and sometimes, it was filled with large rocks that you had to dodge carefully.
It was perhaps the very definition of treacherous road, but I had done so much reading on the road conditions in Costa Rica that I found it to be not as terrifying as I had imagined it. At any rate, I was definitely glad I had not driven the road in the night!
Nearly to Monteverde, we turned around a corner and were met with a group of two guys on horseback and a dog herding some cows up the road. They looked like expats. We looked bewildered and amazed. The barbed wire along the roadside probably kept the cows out of road trouble normally 😉
We were stunned by the silence of paved roads once we hit Monteverde. Founded by Quakers in the 50s, it has grown into a tourist haven in the mountains, famous for its cloud reserve and ziplining.
Our hotel/rental home was up an impossible-looking hill which our trusty 4×4, now named Chet Tanner, chugged up dutifully. It offered a beautiful view of the far-off beach and other peaks of the mountain range.
We puttered around town for lunch and groceries. I had a lemonade which tasted like someone licked a garden, but in a good way: it had basil in in. Yum!
We passed by a few derelict buildings in this charming tourist trap of a town, notably a pizzeria where someone had definitely left a pizza in the oven too long. Once stunning, it was now burnt to a husk. Even some of the tiles were melted!
Our entertainment for the evening was a night hike in the Monteverde cloud forest. Unlike my last night hike, this one came with a lower danger of murder, a larger group of people, and a different set of animals. The forest was so loud it made my ears ring, with thousands of frogs and insects chirping loudly away at the end of the dry season.
Out knowledgeable guide, Ricardo, did an excellent job of pointing out wildlife and bugs on the hike. We saw lizards, snakes, frogs, and a lot of beetles and tarantulas as we wandered in the darkness of the forest. Creepy – and neat!
